This was a two star book for me up until the 80% mark. The horror really delivered at the end of the story (which is why it’s 3 stars instead of 2), but it just took too long to get there. I didn’t enjoy the pacing and I felt that the book could have been shortened and had the same impact. The author also unnecessarily talked about pee twice in chapter three and it was just weird in my opinion. Some of the things that I did like were the atmospheric setting and the creativity with the truth behind what was really going on on the planet.

I love that the sci-fi/horror genre has really taken off in the past year or so, and I thought this was a great entry into the canon. I read these to see if my husband will like it, and to keep my literary mind open with all kinds of genres I wouldn't normally pick up, and I enjoyed this one more than most actually! Well written and paced just right, this was a thrill of a story that allowed me to suspend my disbelief for a while.

A greedy, rich, murderous family, a chance to redeem herself, a trip in spacy to another planet. Ophelia, a psychologist is on a mission with a team who doesn't trust her. When they arrive on the planet, weird things start to happen. She is trapped on this ancient planet that clearly has some type of life as there are buildings rising from the snow. When a teammate dies a gruesome death, the crew must work together and overcome their pasts. I definitely enjoyed this book! Space, aliens, greedy corporations, and people who do not trust you based on your family.

I think one of my new favorite genres is sci fi horror. And S.A. Barnes is one of my favorite authors of that genre.

She writes the future so well. Even the future tech is written in a way that a time traveler would understand. She also writes isolation well. The sense of being alone in a great expanse of the unknowable.

I felt like this was a tale of classism and the haves and have nots. The setting was another planet, but the same dynamic we see today was at play. Blue collar workers not having the support that they need and the elite 1% exploiting everyone below them.

The character development was wonderful and I loved the flash backs for the main character, Ophelia Bray. They’re given to you in pieces until the twist is thrown out there.

Oh, and there’s lots of body horror as well. Trigger warnings for creepy crawlies beneath the skin.

Space horror at its finest.

Creepy, atmospheric, and tension-filled, this sci-fi horror novel is quick read with a plot that gradually builds until you’re not able to turn the pages fast enough. The characters were engaging and I found myself having a lot of fun reading it despite the intensity.

First of all, thanks to Tor and Netgalley for this e-Arc!

I've been wanting to read a book by S.A. Barnes since the 2022 Goodreads Choice Awards, in which she was nominated for best science fiction. The idea of a horror book that happens in the space caught my attention since the first second I knew about it. This is why I decided to request a galley for Barnes' new book: Ghost Station.

Ghost Station captures that trapped feeling I crave in a good space thriller, a mix of exhilaration and claustrophobia. It's a gripping read, and I can easily picture it becoming a chilling movie.

The main character, Ophelia Bray, is a psychologist seeking redemption from her troubled past. She joins a mission with a noble purpose. Yet, unease creeps in upon arrival. Their task: to retrieve artifacts from a seemingly abandoned planet. The previous crew's hasty departure and chillingly personal belongings left behind hint at something sinister.

Now, even though S.A. Barnes, excels at crafting an unsettling atmosphere, this book was slow-paced. The horror escalates, but without tipping into outright jump scares. I would say reading this book was entertaining but it was amazing that special something that would make me give it more than 4 stars.

Ghost Station follows Dr. Bray, a psychologist who gets assigned to a team of planet explorers to test out different therapies to prevent a mental illness that has been afflicting astronauts. I think this story is best when you go in relatively blind to the plot past that!

I really enjoyed this. The claustrophobia, the mystery, and the intriguing settings all really lent themselves nicely to an entertaining, fast-paced story. Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley and TorNightfire for this ARC!

I read Dead Silence by Barnes a few weeks back and I liked it, but didn’t love it.

I felt the same way with Ghost Station. I was slightly confused through the first half, but by the second half I was fully invested! Unfortunately I was let down by the ending. That being said, I found this story to be very interesting. I’m not a huge sci-fi reader but I think fans of it will like this one!

So here’s the set up. Ophelia’s life mission has been the study and prevention of ERs a type of space PTSD that can be deadly to space explorers. She’s also running from her past and the crimes of her father. So she joins a crew as they survey an abandoned isolated planet but right from the start things are off. It looks like the previous team left in a hurry and the station is in disarray. The rest of the crew plays it off as if it’s a prank by the previous residents to spook them, but little things start to add up and they are about to discover much worse.

Space Horror, I’m here for it! The isolation and feeling of claustrophobia with nowhere to run and no one to help you along with creepy abandoned spaces, being snowed in, and body horror creates such a delightfully tense read. This has it all and I kind of loved it. It kept me turning the pages late into the night. The story and atmosphere build up at just the right pace and Ophelia’s past adds another dark layer to it.

This is great for fans of Alien and The Thing or readers who enjoyed the author’s previous novel, Dead Silence. It’s tense and suspenseful and will keep you reading late into the night!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire. I received an advance review copy, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Great for fans of the Aliens movies/books. It has a similar vibe; however, this one left me wanting more than what I got. Felt like the jar was left half empty. There’s a neat exploration of how sins of the past haunt us. But it lacks stuff happening when I wanted stuff to happen.

While I enjoyed this author's previous work, Dead Silence. I don't think this hit the same tone for me as before. I think the book was pretty thrilling at times but the characters and plot in general didn't hold my interest as much. I would still love to read from this author's work in the future, though.

Thank you @tornightfire #partner for the #gifted copy of this book and e-book!

Looking to go on an intense, creepy, eerie wild ride to space? I certainly was when I hopped on this trip to this abandoned planet! Ophelia Bray is psychologist that studies and tries to prevent a condition, ERS, that shows up in space and is responsible for a mass amount of people dying…no being murdered….in space. She is assigned a small crew and tries her best to fit in however she thinks they are hiding something from her. The crew is awfully focused on trying to undermine why the previous crew left so abruptly. Ophelia tries to stay focused on the purpose she’s there and then the captain is found murdered. Ophelia is now faced with trying to figure out if this is the start of ERS and the unraveling of the crew or if something else is at play!

I felt like this book could easily be a made into an action packed movie! It very much felt like one as I flipped through these intensely written pages! Space creeps me out on a normal day but add some horror to the mix and it’s absolutely terrifying! This book is well written and the perfect “race against time” book. It definitely kept my heart racing as I watched the insanity unfold. There is just something about being in an isolated place fighting against an unknown disease or crazy people that leave me wanting to not stop until I know what happens! This was my first book by this author and I wouldn’t love to see what other scarring world they come up with! Thank you again #tornightfire

My thanks to NetGalley for making this eARC available to me.

Lots of nice suspense, and horrific backstory revealed a bit at a time. Kept me wondering what was going on, who was good, who was bad, who would survive. Very nice blend of sci-fi and horror.

"A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.

Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS - a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.

While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer's hasty departure than opening up to her. That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia's worst nightmare starting - a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what's happening. But trust is hard to come by...and the crew isn't the only one keeping secrets."

I love what amounts to haunted house stories in outer space.

I found this one to be significantly more enjoyable (though also significantly less scary / less “special”) than Barnes’s previous work DEAD SILENCE - I mean, let’s be real, nothing tops an ocean of frozen human corpses just floating near the ceiling of an abandoned shopping mall. I think again that Barnes spent way too long trying to make the MC “unreliable” and not letting the true terror of the situation speak for itself - however, I did really like the way the characters interacted with each other and the dynamic that Ophelia creates coming into the mix after a tragedy.

There are a lot of moments where the attention to detail that was present in Dead Silence could really have elevated Ghost Station if we weren’t being dragged along with Ophelia’s distractions: namely whenever we’re exploring a space or in a high-tension confrontation in what is essentially a pitch-black maze. Really settling into the details would have done so much for me personally to elevate the horror.

S.A. Barnes' next book after the thoroughly enjoyable Dead Silence is Ghost Station, which is about a group of people assigned to a desolate corner of the universe in an abandoned science lab that was built to study some fascinating alien architecture. When strange things begin to worry the crew's psychologist (the unwelcome latest addition to the team), it is up to her to diagnose herself and her colleagues and figure out just what is going on and what kind of danger they are all really in.

When it comes to atmosphere, this book seems to be doing everything right from the gate. This is a book that directly communicates to the reader the remoteness of the far-flung outpost of human science and ingenuity is from the nearest people who could offer aid. I felt the force of the wind when characters were forced to venture outside the lab station, and was along for the ride when it came to the confusion of the characters as things went wrong, By the time the horrifying revelations began to pour in one after another, well, things get very strange very quickly and if the reader is going to fall off the boat at any time it is going to be when the reveals start towards the latter end of the book.

Ghost Station starts off slow and doesn’t truly pick up until about halfway. The premise was right up my alley (ala Ice - xfiles meets space) I do wish it were a bit darker or scarier, it seemed to only scraped the surface on its potential. The epilogue was a nice touch for those who prefer a tidier ending.

The deep dive into Phes past and psyche was probably my favorite part.

3 stars. This book was ambitious, and had a lot of potential. Interplanetary travel, mysterious illnesses, checkered pasts, an alien planet...it had all the makings of a really good sci-fi horror novel. And yet, while I really enjoyed parts of this, it just didn't come together in the end. The build-up to the climax was good, creepy, mysterious. I was really interested to know how it was going to work out. And then...it really made no sense. The end was complicated (not in a good way), and I still don't know that I fully understand what happened. I will stick with 3 stars because I did really like about 2/3 of the book. It just fell flat for me in the end.

Thank you for the opportunity to preview Ghost Station.
This is a science fiction horror story. This book reminded me of Aliens and other types of fantasy stories
A group of scientists and researchers are stranded on a planet where strange things happen including murder.
A good book Intriguing and scary at times
3 stars

Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes has such an amazing premise. An abandoned research facility on an alien planet with crumbling civilization ruins nearby, the main character Ophelia Bray is a doctor with a mysterious past. She has her own personal reasons for joining this dangerous Research and Evaluation team. Family secrets, corporate politics and mental illness all gave the plotline unexpected depth. Frankly any science fiction novel that involves exploring alien worlds is a one-click auto buy for me.

S.A. Barnes also known as Stacey Kade writes atmospheric, creepy environments so well. Her previous book Dead Silence was a huge hit in my horror reader group. So when I heard about this book, I knew I needed to preorder a signed copy before even reading the synopsis. It did not disappoint and you don't need to have read her other books to start this one. I literally inhaled this book. I could not put it down. Ghost Station, for me was as good or better than Dead Silence and that's really saying something. Great work on this book. Everything from the prose to the cover art is fantastic. Go immediately and reserve a copy.